God in the White House
A History: How Faith Shaped the Presidency from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush

This rather concise book explores how the religious beliefs of Presidents are discussed by interest groups and the voting public, and how that reflects on the American people - and it's fascinating. It starts with John F. Kennedy, and I was excited to learn that us Roman Catholics (Kennedy being one......more

I picked this up at the library because it looked interesting. That proved to be the case, but the author's bias kept it from being any better. In fact, that bias leaves the reader under-informed and distorts the author's analysis. The author gives it away in his introduction. He doesn't care for the......more

The religious views of our presidents are not always reflected in their policies. This much is rather obvious, but Balmer digs deeper by pointing the finger back at us, the voters. Perhaps in expecting our presidents to be paragons of virtue, we are actually admitting that we don't live up to our ow......more

God in the White House is very informative about behind-the-scenes events having to do with presidential elections. However, the autoría biased against the Religious Right and it skews his viewpoint. I did enjoy reading about George Bush being converted, Jimmy Carter attempting to help poor people b......more

The intersection of religion and politics is a subject of great fascination to me. It seems that a lot of today’s world leaders have an unfortunate tendency to frame large-scale conflicts as matters of revelation and prophecy, our most recent Republican president being an embarrassing example. Randa......more